63 Inspiring Effort Quotes

Effort is the driving force behind every significant achievement, an unsung hero that transforms dreams into reality. It’s the dedicated energy we invest, the steady resolve that fuels our progress, and the persistence that propels us forward, even in the face of adversity. In the realm of motivation and personal growth, effort holds a special place, often proving to be more vital than talent alone. To celebrate this unyielding spirit, we've curated a collection of 63 inspiring quotes that capture the essence of effort and its transformative power. Whether you are seeking motivation for a personal journey or encouragement to overcome obstacles, these quotes serve as a powerful reminder of what is possible when we commit our full energy and passion to our goals.

1. “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” - Samuel Johnson

2. “People pretend not to like grapes when the vines are too high for them to reach.” - Marguerite de Navarre

3. “I took off my sweatshirt and dropped it on the grass and set off around the track. As soon as I started running, the world changed. The bodies spread out across the green of the football field were parts of a scene remembered, not one real at this moment. The secret of effort is to keep on, I told myself. Not for the world would I have stopped then, and yet nothing- not even if I had been turned handsome as a reward for finishing- could have made up for the curious pain of the effort.” - Harold Brodkey

4. “All the effort in the world won't matter if you're not inspired.” - Chuck Palahniuk

5. “Nothing [...] will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.” - Samuel Johnson

6. “The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.” - Mary Shelley

7. “Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.” - Samuel Johnson

8. “There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. ...Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you and me made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest.” - Ralph Moody

9. “The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.” - Vera Nazarian

10. “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” - Theodore Roosevelt

11. “When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.” - Vera Nazarian

12. “Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.” - Helen Keller

13. “I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.” - Mary Karr

14. “I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such a waste! I thought, ‘If only she had started out with a good teacher and gotten the proper training, she’d be so much further along!’ But I was wrong about that. She was not the kind of child who could stand proper training. There just happen to be people like that. They’re blessed with this marvelous talent, but they can’t make the effort to systematize it. They end up squandering it in little bits and pieces. I’ve seen my share of people like that. At first you think they’re amazing. Like, they can sight-read some terrifically difficult piece and do a damn good job playing it all the way through. You see them do it, and you’re overwhelmed. you think, ‘I could never do that in a million years.’ But that’s as far as they go. They can’t take it any further. And why not? Because they won’t put in the effort. Because they haven’t had the discipline pounded into them. They’ve been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they’ve been able to play things well without any effort and they’ve had people telling them how great they are from the time they’re little, so hard work looks stupid to them. They’ll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher figures they’ve put enough into it and lets them go to the next thing. And they do that in half the time and go on to the next piece. They never find out what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a certain element required or character building. It’s a tragedy.” - Haruki Murakami

15. “I found out it is just as hard to make a movie that you are not proud of as it is to make one you love.” - Craig Ferguson

16. “He is beginning to master wisdom when he tries to learn how not to try.” - Paul Brunton

17. “Healey’s First Law Of Holes: When in one, stop digging.” - Denis Healey

18. “We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.” - Thomas Jefferson

19. “I don't know where this pressure came from. I can't blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need to tell anybody about. But not acknowledging the effort that ended in a less than perfect result impacted me as a child. If I didn't win, then we wouldn't tell anyone that I had even competed to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging that someone else was better. Keeping the secret made me think that losing was something to be ashamed of, and that unless I was sure I was going to be the champion there was no point in trying. And there was certainly no point to just having fun.” - Portia De Rossi

20. “Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.” - Brenda Ueland

21. “If you're not gonna go all the way, why go at all?” - Joe Namath

22. “As Henry Moore carvedor modelled his sculpture every day,he strove to surpass Donatello4. and failed, but woke the next morningelated for another try.” - Donald Hall

23. “Don't put your all into someone if they treat you like dirt.” - Raven Symone

24. “If I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it.” - Emily Brontë

25. “The reward of a work is to have produced it; the reward of effort is to have grown by it.” - Antonin Sertillanges

26. “Just as there’s usually a space or interval between people passing on the street, even if it sometimes seems very small, a space also exists between thoughts. In your meditation, see if you can perceive this gap between thoughts. What is it, and does it belong to the realm of time? If it does not, then it’s unborn and undying, beyond all conditioning, which is a psychological carry-over from the past to the present. Whatever thoughts or internal conflicts come up—do nothing. Do not try to force them to cease or change. And don’t “do nothing” to still the mind, quiet fears, or resolve conflicts—all of this is doing something. It only leads to more struggling and prevents you from seeing the actual nature of thought and internal conflict. Genuine attention has no motive.This observation or listening doesn’t involve effort. Effort merely distracts you from what’s taking place in the instant. A kind of concentration exists that’s not forced. We’ve all experienced listening or paying attention to something we truly enjoyed. At that moment, was effort required for concentration to take place?” - H.E. Davey

27. “Gift ain't what you take by effort, as swag ain't what you worthy have.” - Toba Beta

28. “You know, I know I should be just as panicky as you about the filthy work - one wants to do nothing in the evenings, certainly not spread rotten books around & dredge for a 'line'. It must be like still being a student, with an essay to do after a week's drinking, only you haven't had the drinking. Quite clearly, to me, you aren't a voluntary worker, from the will: you do it by intuitive flashes, more like an act of creation, & when the flashes don't come, as of course they don't, especially when the excess energy of undergraduate days is gone, then it is a hideous unnatural effort.” - Philip Larkin

29. “Only super-efforts count.” - G.I. Gurdjieff

30. “The easiest way to gain someone's trust is to deserve it. This should be pretty easy, assuming you're just being you and being real. Minimal effort too.” - Ashly Lorenzana

31. “In this world, the only easy path is the course of least resistance. This is the path always taken by a stream of water as it seeks lower and lower ground. It will never go over an obstacle, and even when it has to go around one, water will always find the easiest way around, the way that requires as little work as possible. This, you have have noticed, is what makes rivers crooked, and it makes men and women crooked too. The easy path never goes anywhere but downward, and spiritually, that is not the direction we want to go. Worthwhile destinations always take extra effort.” - Gary Henry

32. “Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death we become heroes.” - Chuck Palahniuk

33. “It's not about perfect. It's about effort. And when you bring that effort every single day, that's where transformation happens. That's how change occurs.” - Jillian Michaels

34. “If you're going to do something, strive to do it better than anyone else. Do it all the way. If you're going to half-ass it, why bother?” - Ashly Lorenzana

35. “Nothing is for free, even in heaven.” - Toba Beta

36. “The good life doesn't knock on the door. Joy is a job.” - Lionel Shriver

37. “May our effort, confidence and concern for others be the altar from which we pray for personal abundance.” - Laura Teresa Marquez

38. “I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.” - Samuel Johnson

39. “One bulb at a time. There was no other way to do it. No shortcuts--simply loving the slow process of planting. Loving the work as it unfolded. Loving an achievement that grew slowly and bloomed for only three weeks each year.” - Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards

40. “We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.” - William James

41. “No one ever drowned in sweat.” - USMC

42. “You need to try.” - Emily J. Proctor

43. “People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies.” - Haruki Murakami

44. “When I have tried and failed, I shall have failed.” - Sophocles

45. “Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.” - Bram Stoker

46. “humility is beyond our reach. if it were a product of reaching, we would instinctively be proud of reaching it. it is a gift.” - John Piper

47. “Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. Sit still with me and meditate on how useless effort is, how alien the will, and on how our very meditation is no more useful than effort, and no more our own than the will. Meditate too on how a life that wants nothing can have no weight in the flux of things, but a life the wants everything can likewise have no weight in the flux of things, since it cannot obtain everything, and to obtain less than everything is not worthy of souls that seek the truth.” - Fernando Pessoa

48. “Es saku jums jau dienas simt un piecas - lai puķi dabūtu ir jānoliecas.” - Imants Ziedonis

49. “No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.”4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 2313) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 2414) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 2818) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream."24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat".40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President” - Pablo

50. “Nu mai trăim un prezent placid, ci suntem prinși cu toții în efortul de a ne pregăti permanent pentru viitor.” - Jean-Claude Carrière

51. “There were those who loved liberty, who cried out to live their own lives, to strive, to rise above, to achieve, and those bent on the mindless equality of stagnation brought about through the enforcement of an artificial, arbitrary, gray uniformity--those who wanted to transcend through their own effort, and those who wanted others to think for them and were willing to pay the ultimate price.” - Terry Goodkind

52. “There is never a traffic jam created from people going the extra mile” - Jeff Dixon

53. “To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.” - Bertrand Russell

54. “Fiecare nouă tehnologie impune dobândirea unui nou sistem de reflexe, care ne cere noi eforturi, și asta la răstimpuri din ce în ce mai scurte.” - Jean-Claude Carrière

55. “A sign of power in a man is not only when people follow what he suggests, but also when people make a conscious effort to do the exact opposite of what he suggests.” - Criss Jami

56. “To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.” - Joan D. Vinge

57. “The quality of life that you have is determined solely by the effort you put into giving your life value, purpose and a reason.” - Steven Redhead

58. “Never give up. It's like breathing—once you quit, your flame dies letting total darkness extinguish every last gasp of hope. You can't do that. You must continue taking in even the shallowest of breaths, continue putting forth even the smallest of efforts to sustain your dreams. Don't ever, ever, ever give up.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

59. “No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.” - Robert McKee

60. “Trying and getting hurt can't possibly be worse for you than being... stuck.” - Eliezer Yudkowsky

61. “You write with ease, to show your breeding,But easy writing's curst hard reading.” - Richard Brinsley Sheridan

62. “No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.” - Murasaki Shikibu

63. “A focused Mind is a result Of a little Effort To tell Your Distractions To sleep for A couple of hours While you are at WORK.” - Sujit Lalwani